A woman who says she was raped by a Baltimore police officer in exchange for her release from custody took the witness stand Thursday on the first day of his trial in Circuit Court.
At times speaking in a choked voice or with tears rolling down her cheeks, the woman said Jemini Jones, 29, brought her and a friend in handcuffs to the Southwest District station house on Dec. 27, 2005, and told her “I was going to have to give him some” sex in exchange for her freedom. Officers took the women into custody after spotting them smoking marijuana in a parked car, according to court testimony.
“It is a proposition: What are you willing to do not to be arrested?” prosecutor JoAnne Stanton told the jury.
Jones, a member of the now-disbanded Flex Squad, faces charges of rape and misconduct in office. Defense attorney Janice Bledsoe said in her opening statement that the woman created the rape story to avoid retribution on the streets for telling police about a drug dealer.
“She had information about the very person that he was investigating,” Bledsoe said. But once she climbed out of a police car in the city, Bledsoe said, the alleged victim “doesn?t want anybody to know” she spoke with police “because she?s afraid for her life.”
Speaking from the stand, the woman said she had just lit a “blunt,” marijuana rolled into an emptied cigar, when she spotted a white unmarked police car pull up behind her. Jones and his partners took her and her friend, who was seated directly behind her, into custody and let the two men seated with them on the other side of the car go, she said.
Bledsoe said the officers handcuffed only the women because they were the “two people in the car closest to the illegal act,” or the marijuana smoke.
Stanton said a rape exam turned up spermicide but no DNA evidence because Jones used a condom. He took it away afterward, she said, and told the alleged victim, “I don?t want to get in trouble.”
Once she reported the crime, Stanton said, the woman pointed investigators to the drawer from which he drew the condom.
“Sure enough,” Stanton said, “there?s 40 condoms right where she said” they would be.
